Ethnic background influences immune response to TB

YOUR ancestry influences the way your body fights tuberculosis – a finding that could affect how we test new TB drugs.

Adrian Martineau at Queen Mary University of London measured the response to TB of 128 Londoners of either African or Eurasian descent. He compared 57 markers for inflammation – part of the immune response – with those in healthy people. Only four markers changed the same way in the two ethnic groups, relative to "typical" levels. The rest changed differently according to ethnicity.

This divergence was not linked to the strain of TB involved, but did correlate with an individual's genetic variant of a protein that varies between ethnic groups (PLoS Pathogens, doi.org/m5r).

Tests to diagnose and monitor TB work by tracking people's immune reactions, so should be designed to take ethnicity into account, says Martineau.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Ethnic origins affect how body fights TB"

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